Beautiful Yetta: The Yiddish Chicken

Beautiful Yetta #1

by Daniel Pinkwater, Jill Pinkwater (Illustrator)

Yetta,beautiful Yetta manages to escape from the butcher shop. But now she is lost in Brooklyn! Oh dear!

Genres: Picture Books, Childrens, Jewish, Fiction, Animals, Spanish Literature, Birds

32 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Daniel Manus Pinkwater is an author of mostly children's books and is an occasional commentator on National Public Radio. He attended Bard College. Well-known books include Lizard Music, The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, Fat Men from Space, Borgel, and the picture book The Big Orange Splot. Pinkwater has also illustrated many of his books in the past, although for more recent works that task has passed to his wife Jill Pinkwater.

Reviews

[Noelle]

Ha ha ha! Chickens don't live in trees! This book is silly.

[Megan (ReadingRover)]

This book was on the table at a clients house so I read it. It’s a pretty cute story and it can also help kids learn Hebrew.

[Beverlee Jobrack]

Delightful and full of hope and love.

[Maureen]

Bloom's Questions:
1. Where did the story take place?
2. What was the main idea of the story?
3. What questions would you ask the chicken when it escaped the cage?
4. How would you compare Beautiful Yetta to the other chickens in captivity?
5. Do you agree with Beautiful Yetta's escape? Why or why not?
6. Create a new ending where Beautiful Yetta did not save the wild parrot. What adventure would she go on instead?

Text to self connection: In teaching this past year, I was working with a family that was not impressed with teachers/schools in the past. I showed the student's mom, through my actions of kindness and respect toward her and her son, that not all teachers are like what she had experienced in the past. Just like in the story, Beautiful Yetta protected a parrot and the other parrots took her into their group.

Book Review:
(August 2010). Horn Book Guide.
http://www.booksinprint.com.leo.lib.u...#

[Susan]

Odd, yet appealing!

[Kelly]

I do like the integration of Yiddish in the book. That's a neat addition. The story is nice (very Daniel Pinkwater), and the illustrations are nice, also (very Jill Pinkwater).

[Cassandra Elise]

Cute book with a multicultural element to it to teach children some words in a new language.

[Molly Cluff (Library!)]

It was fun reading the Spanish sections! I don't speak hebrew/yiddish very well though, haha

[Amy Meltzer]

This book would be great to read next to the chicken coop.

[Vivian Zenari]

Super silly chicken parrot Brooklyn story: trilingual

[Julie]

Cute multilingual story

[Rose H]

Why have I read this

[Heidi Burkhart]

Delightful! Lovely illustrations by Jill Pinkwater. As an added extra there is some text in Hebrew throughout the book.

[Lyndsay]

Loved this children's book that used English, Yiddish, and Spanish! What a cute idea for a book.

[Shoshanna]

absolutely loved this! a Yiddish speaking chicken makes a new home in Brooklyn with Spanish speaking parrots!

[Daria Krechevsky]

Bars

[Krissy]

This one was fun! I wasn't aware of the flocks of Quaker parrots/Monk Parakeets in the Brooklyn area. I loved how Eduardo spoke Spanish since his species is from South America.

[Kelly Anderson]

What a silly book about a beautiful chicken named Yetta. I didn't realize there was a sequel as well. This is always a fun one to read out loud, especially with the phonetic Yiddish written on each page.

[Sarah Sammis]

Daniel Pinkwater is another author my local library has introduced me to. Two of his books were sitting on their recommended children's books recently: The Neddiad (review coming) and Beautiful Yetta: The Yiddish Chicken. Now since one is a middle grade book and the other is a picture book, I didn't notice that they were by the same author until I sat down to write my reviews.

Beautiful Yetta is about a Yiddish speaking chicken who breaks free from her cage and escapes the truck brining her into the city. While she's trying to figure out a safe place to be she saves a wild parrot from a hungry looking cat. The book is written in English, Yiddish (with transliteration) and Spanish.

The book is set in Brooklyn and at the end of the book Daniel Pinkwater includes a little background on the story. There are in fact wild parrots (just as there are in South Pasadena and San Francisco) and kosher butchers. He says he doesn't know if chickens speak Yiddish but thought it would be fun to suppose they could.

I read Beautiful Yetta before I read The Neddiad and I was skeptical at first. It's not that I don't believe in chickens or parrots in urban areas; I've seen both. It just seemed like an incredibly odd choice of story. Now having completely enjoyed Melvin the Shaman from The Neddiad I've come to realize that odd ball characters and plot lines are what he specializes in. I can certainly say that Yetta has stuck with me both as a story and as a character.

[Rachel Engwall]

Daniel Pinkwater does an extraordinary job in this book incorporating other cultures. Not only does he write about the Jewish culture, of which he is an insider, but he touches on that of a Hispanic culture as well. He incorporated the language from each culture and pronunciations to help readers who are not familiar with the language.

This book is obviously a fiction book, however it is based on a non-fiction event. This book was inspired by the Jewish migration to the United States from the 1880s-1924, when over two million Jews arrived seeking safety, freedom, and other opportunities. This background could lead to a number of historical topics to discuss in the classroom.

This book would be a great read for elementary-aged children. It may be better for a read-aloud in the beginning because of the multiple languages present, however I think the students could read it on their own afterwards.

[Erin Reilly-Sanders]

The illustrations were bright, fun, and appealing, but somewhat mundane feeling in that they were nice, but not excellent. What really shines about the book is the incorporation of Yiddish and Spanish dialog into the book, which would be a good cultural experience as a read aloud by a teacher happy to practice the phonetic pronunciations ahead of time. Otherwise, the story seems oddly stilted, perhaps attempting for a humour that it did not achieve, and rather unexciting in the way that the plot is arranged. It seems to including a random plug for organic and free range chicken farming. However, on an academic level, it would be a really interesting subject for an analysis of attitudes toward the county and city. As it is apparently based upon real events, I would have appreciated an author's note or news clipping or something with more information.

[Peacegal]

Beautiful Yetta is a rather unusual picture book. Yetta is a Yiddish-speaking chicken who escapes from the crate taking her to slaughter and ends up in Brooklyn. There, she meets a flock of Spanish-speaking parrots who take her under their wings.

On one hand, this book introduces youngsters to different languages and teaches them to recite several phrases in each. It also pokes a hole in the theory of “happy meat”: even though Yetta grew up in comfort in an organic farm, she still makes it quite clear that she wants to live rather than be killed for chicken soup!

On the other, Yetta is not presented in a very professional way. The story is very disjointed and doesn’t have “flow.” The illustrations are quite amateurish and look as if they were accomplished with Crayola markers.

In all, I’m thinking “Good message, sloppy execution.”

[Helen]

My daughter’s name is similar as was named after my grandmother, Yetta, so of course I had to buy this book. Also, I love Daniel Pinkwater. This book is ideal for a readaloud with children and caregivers of various linguistic backgrounds, as it uses three different languages itself (English, Yiddish and Spanish). As a jump-off, one could pull some of the words from the story and have the children and caregivers say or write them in other languages, or make posters with different ways of saying one word.

[Eva-Marie Nevarez]

2.5 - This has to be the oddest book we've pulled out of the library to date. I agree with someone else who reviewed the book when they said it was interesting learning about the pigeons in Brooklyn. Some of the sentences were stilted inmy opinion but for the most part if flowed along fairly well.
Julia liked how Yetta saved the pigeons from the cat and turned into their Mommy.
the book also has the sentences that Yetta speaks translated to Yiddish on each page. That's different and interesting but unless you know Yiddish or have a penchant for for only knowing a few sentences of a foreign language it won't do much for you.
On the other hand, I now know how to say "Look! That chicken saved Eduardo!". And that can't be learned from just any book.

[Laura]

Yetta, an organic chicken from the country, escapes her fate and finds a new life on the mean streets of Brooklyn. The text is in English with Yiddish translations for the dialog. The plot is a bit lacking and as enchanted as I was by the idea of a Yiddish organic chicken, there are quite a number of plot holes. I do like that the parrots that Yetta befriends speak Spanish and form a terrific friendship with her.

Kids growing up in a Yiddish household will enjoy the translations. If you have a student population that would appreciate this title, it's a good purchase. While the book includes Yiddish translations, it doesn't actually included information about Jewish faith or culture.

[Nielson]

Yetta, beautiful Yetta, is a Yiddish chicken that escapes the coop and flies free in the streets of Brooklyn. Yetta has a hard time fitting in in the big city until a group of green parrots takes her in as one of their own. This is a multilingual story as all of Yetta's text bubbles are written in a different language so the book lends itself well to a story share about diversity. The unique text written in short quick sentences and the bright and vibrant illustrations will keep the students flying right along with Yetta. Love the author's sense of humor on the back cover as to how he is willing to go on record that Yetta's story is true, including that she speaks Yiddish.

[Dana]

Such a cute book!
When Mr. Flegleman, the organic chicken rancher takes a load of chickens to market, the brave and beautiful Yetta escapes into the unknown world of Brooklyn. Yetta speaks in Yiddish, written in Hebrew and translated into English and transliterated. She finds Brooklyn to be strange and frightening until she bravely saves Eduardo the parrot, who speaks Spanish, from a cat. She settles in and begins to enjoy life in Brooklyn with her new parrot friends.
I think the book is very cute and funny and I enjoyed it very much!

[Matthew]

This book was strange, but I write that a lot about Daniel Pinkwater's books, but something else that I write about his stories that holds true here is that it was funny and wonderful at the same time. He decided to make this a trilingual story, mixing English, Spanish, and Yiddish text together into a heaping helping of bizarre storytelling fun. He's back on chickens again, a strange running motif in his books, that and stories set in northern New Jersey. Odd. This story is based on a true story though, so that makes it even stranger. I don't know. The book's worth a read. Give it a try.

[Ellyn]

michael put this on my desk as a joke, and it was a pretty good one. but then i decided to read the book and i really liked it - everything the chicken says in english has yiddish underneath it, and when the parrots speak, it's in english and spanish. it was also very interesting learning (on my own) about all the parrots in brooklyn. i used the book today in a story time and i think it went pretty well. thank you, michael.

[Dolly]

This is a fun little story about a chicken from an organic farm being lost in Brooklyn and meeting a flock of "wild" parrots who had escaped from their owners and multiplied. It offers dialogue in Yiddish, English and Spanish and has some information in the back of the book about Yiddish and Hebrew. It's a strange little story, but is based on actual examples of animals (beyond alley cats, pigeons and rats) living wild in the city.